A device input and output control (IOCTL) interface is a mechanism through which an application can communicate with a device driver. The IOCTL interface can be used by applications to send control codes to a variety of devices. Each control code represents an operation for the driver to perform. For example, a control code can ask a device driver to return information about the corresponding device, or direct the driver to carry out an action on the device, such as formatting a disk and the like.
There are typically standard control codes and device-specific control codes. The types of control codes that can be specified depend on the device being accessed and the platform on which the application is running. Applications can use standard control codes or device-specific control codes to perform direct input and output operations on a particular device, such as a floppy disk drive, hard disk drive, tape drive, or CD-ROM drive.
Today, challenges exist with respect to validating packets that are sent via IOCTL interfaces because, often times, the packets are not described in a format other than one that is known to the vendor of the packet. Additionally, challenges exist because there are no standard ways for a driver to specify, to entities other than certain driver clients, operational parameters associated with its set of operations.